from the law-enforcement's-job-isn't-supposed-to-be-easy dept

“Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, ‘Let’s collect the whole haystack,’ ” said one former senior U.S. intelligence official who tracked the plan’s implementation. “Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it.”

Others have certainly reported on this before, including long-time NSA watcher James Bamford, but more and more people are realizing how the NSA functions these days. Combine the "collect it all" mentality with the fact that Alexander is the head of both the NSA, which is supposed to do signal intelligence, and the US Cyber Command, which is supposed to handle cyber security, and you have a clear conflict of interests that can lead to some sticky situations.

“He is the only man in the land that can promote a problem by virtue of his intelligence hat and then promote a solution by virtue of his military hat,” said one former Pentagon official, voicing a concern that the lines governing the two authorities are not clearly demarcated and that Alexander can evade effective public oversight as a result. The former official spoke on the condition of anonymity to be able to talk freely.

Remember how we just had the talking points that the NSA used with the media concerning the Utah Bluffdale data center. In those talking points, the NSA played up the US Cyber Command aspects, and how they were "partnering" with tech companies for that purpose. They left out almost entirely the surveillance side of things. And that's the problem. The NSA under Alexander can hide under the claim that they're trying to "protect our networks" allowing them to avoid admitting that they're collecting everything and spying on everyone.

Furthermore, the moral panics and FUD that Alexander spews to make his job easier is really quite sickening:

“Everyone also understands,” he said, “that if we give up a capability that is critical to the defense of this nation, people will die.”

You can't have perfect security, and there are serious tradeoffs that Alexander doesn't seem to care about in collecting all data. There's little actual evidence that these activities have really prevented anything serious that couldn't have been prevented via more traditional means.

Furthermore, there's a key point in all of this that often gets ignored: the US Constitution was put in place, on purpose, with the idea that "making law enforcement's job easier" is not a valid excuse. The whole point of civil liberties is that we recognize that we give people more freedoms and that means law enforcement's job is harder. But we think that's a good thing, because we trust that on the whole, keeping the innocent from being spied upon and accused is much more important that stopping every possible crime or finding every criminal. But, General Alexander and others in the NSA appear to want to flip this concept on its head. And that's incredibly dangerous.

Re: Oh, let's name "tech companies", starting with Google.

The code in question is SE for Android, an Android-specific derivation of SELinux. SELinux has been part of mainstream Linux distros for a decade. While the NSA did contribute code to SELinux, SELinux is a standalone open source project with many contributors, and, more importantly, reviewers. Ditto for SE for Android.

Re: Re: Oh, let's name "tech companies", starting with Google.

Re: Oh, let's name "tech companies", starting with Google.

Is Mike mentioned in OOTB's post? No. Is Techdirt mentioned? No. Is this particular post from OOTB a smear or attack on anyone here? No. Once again it seems a post is flagged for simply being from OOTB, not because of its content.

Re: Oh, let's name "tech companies", starting with Google.

'“Everyone also understands,” he said, “that if we give up a capability that is critical to the defense of this nation, people will die.”'

Yes, I do understand that. But, two things:

1) I dispute that the phone metadata for the entire country is "critical to the defense of the nation".

2) People MAY die, but sometimes that is the tradeoff. Perhaps fewer people would die if police were allowed to put people in prison without all the proper evidence. If the NYPD could just imprison some of those young black males instead of merely frisking them... why, the murder rate probably would drop. The police often know who the gang members are, after all. But I think we can all agree that this would NOT be an acceptable thing to do, even if it would save lives. Lives saved are important, but sometimes liberty is more important.

It's not that people "may die", we all have that debt to pay at some point in our life. Question is when, not if.

This is not a valid reason to violate the Constitution to generate a Stazi government. This whole spying business is out of hand.

The problem with hunting haystacks for needles is the same one that the Stazi had. We're collecting their data so they must be guilty of something. After all we took the time to collect it. Add to this secret government laws no one knows about but those involved with this spying arm and suddenly you are up for charges you never knew existed. That's not what democracy is about.

Re:

Effectiveness

“Everyone also understands,” he said, “that if we give up a capability that is critical to the defense of this nation, people will die.”

Anyone who understands data analysis realizes that collect everything will swamp the available analysts and police officers, and people will die because of the 'terrorists' that get to carry out an attack. I.e. Boston.

Every once in a great while, ootb accidentally gets outside his envelope and actually posts regarding the topic with a rare sensible reply.

The majority of the time, it's off topic, rants and raves having nothing to do with the post, totally without reference to anything he claims beyond his wild imagination, even when called on it, and frequently dealing with his man crush over Mike.

It pretty much guarantees all his posts will be reported to hide the village idiot.

Re: Re: Never off topic

Some things are worth dieing for.

“Everyone also understands,” he said, “that if we give up a capability that is critical to the defense of this nation, people will die.”

Americans throughout history have been willing to die to protect our constitutional freedoms. We'll even die to help protect the freedom of others in foreign lands. I think the government is making a huge assumption (Ass U Me) that we are willing to give up those freedoms for safety.

Re: Some things are worth dieing for.

Hold on a minute...

“Everyone also understands,” he said, “that if we give up a capability that is critical to the defense of this nation, people will die.”

So with enough capabilities of the US goverment we can live forever? Sorry guys, I used to be on board and against these spying programs too, but with this new revelation I'm now down for the cause! Spy on me all you want good guy NSA, wait... is the S for the Singularity?

They probably are

Look at the whole picture. They have phone records, and internet data from different sources. There is not one reason I can think of -as to why they would not be collecting bank records, credit cards records, and I bet you they have travel records as well like where you went how long you stayed etc. They could probably be looking at all of your purchases and rentals too. It's not far fetched just remember what Snowden said; "If he released just half of what he has it would be enough to start a revolution."

The US Constitution may be the law of the land but they have broken the rules of the US Constitution so many times to where that you can find articles, videos, and the like of people running the Government making jokes of it, and even calling it just a #$%$#$@ piece of paper. ...and the American people continue to ignore what is going on.

Re: Re: They probably are

You know I somewhat agree with you, but at the same time I get this queezy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Not because of what the Government would do... but because of what the American people won't do. Track record so far for all of this spying is Gov=1 People=0. The people don't care enough, or they are too involved in their gadgets to even care about what is going on around them.

Maybe if the NSA had just focused on the needle instead of the whole haystack, they could have prevented the Boston Marathon bombing. I'm sure they had fun sifting through all of those cat pictures from Facebook though.